


River child

by Space_Samurai



Series: River children [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Arranged Marriage, Bittersweet, Childbirth, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 08:39:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19269676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Space_Samurai/pseuds/Space_Samurai
Summary: “Cersei once told me that if I couldn’t love the man I married, I’d love his children.” Sansa recalled. It was meant to be kind, but her words offered her no comfort.Arya could barely hold Eddard Frey without breaking in tears at the memory of her Lyarra Rivers.





	River child

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a continuation of my last fic about them, but it kinda seems like one.

Her husband was so proud of himself when, only three months after their wedding, the Maester of the Twins tells them Arya is with child. He boasts about it to anyone who will listen, including his lord father, who looks at Arya with a barely veiled satisfaction. Like the owner of a priced mare that learns she’s carrying a little stallion.

Arya only feels numb, like she has felt ever since swearing her vows at Riverrun’s Sept.

The pregnancy is a difficult one, her body manifesting the aches from within her heart. She throws up at every dawn, so much and so often that her husband asks for chambers of his own. It’s a small relief, she can’t stand his presence for too long without becoming irritated and bitter. Every day she finds more resemblances to a certain queen she once knew.

He’s not mean or cruel, unlike what she’d expect from Roose Bolton’s former squire. He’s not even scary, though he sometimes tries to be firm and imposing. She laughed at his face the first time he ordered her to give away her breeches and never wear anything like that again near his brothers. During her years with the brotherhood, she had known _scary_ men. Elmar Frey was a clawless kitten facing a toothy wolf, even if the wolf was in chains.

He had gone red in fury and Arya wished he struck her, only to hit him back, harder. But he hadn’t, instead he had asked two of his bloody-thousand sisters to become her companions – _guard dogs._ They choose her hair and her dresses, they perfumed her neck and painted her cheeks in a rosy color, to their brother’s taste. They also told Elmar of her every move and mistake. Arya hated them. She prayed to the Old Gods and to Beric’s Red God to take them all away with a plague.

But if Elmar Frey died and without any children by her, Arya would be married to the next Frey boy Walter Frey could push forward first. So it really didn’t matter.

For all his faults, Elmar tried to lessen her sorrows. He called for the Maester often, bought with his father’s coin every beverage and soothing potion he could find. Arya wondered if it was for her or for his unborn child, either way it meaningless. By having so many eyes over her, he took away the solace she had found in being alone. She could not even cry in privacy anymore, now she had to sit by endless women saying that ‘the first is always the worst’. That was a lie, Arya’s first had been much pleasant.

It hadn’t been like this, it had taken her far too many moons to realize what was happening in her own body. Her bleedings weren’t regular, so she hadn’t noticed when they had stopped. It wasn’t until Gentry pointed out that she was getting fuller around the hips and teats –earning himself an elbow on the ribs- that she noticed something was wrong.

Beric had almost killed him, if it hadn’t been for Arya’s intervention, Gendry would lie dead and burnt by the Lord’s flaming sword. The Hound had laughed so hard he had fallen back on his chair, Thoros had congratulated her and Wenda had privately offered moontea. Arya had considered her offer, but she was too far along to do anything, or so she had been told by the whores in Sharna’s Inn.

Back on then, she had been convinced that the war would never end. Gendry had tried to marry her, only to be quickly turned down.

“I don’t want a husband.” Arya had told him plainly, crossing her arms over her thickening middle.

“If we don’t marry, they’ll be a bastard.” He had argued. “I know that there’s little I can give you, and being a Waters or a Rivers isn’t so far from each other but-“

“No.” Arya was determinate. “I don’t care they’ll be a bastard. They have my blood and that makes them Starks.”

“But others _will_ care.” His blue eyes were full of pain, but Arya wouldn’t be moved.

“ _Who_?” She had asked, at the verge of tears herself. “We are no one. Just Arya and Gendry from the brotherhood without banners.” And she was happy being that way.

If only she had been wiser, if only she had known better…

Lyarra Rivers had slipped out from her body on a cold evening. Bawling and healthy, with a tuff of black hair covering her head. The name was taken from her grandmother and her eyes were her father's dark blue. Arya loved her, in Lyarra and Gendry she saw the beginning of a new pack of her own. It would be just like a song, the three of them would ride together, defending the smallfolk and what was right. Lyarra would be older when the war was over, she’d take her to Winterfell and they’d be received as heroes.

But life was not a song, Lyarra had barely been five moons old when Arya rode to Riverrun at the news of the war’s end. She had been left at the caring hand of Sharna and her husband, as she was too young to join her mother and father on such journey.

Arya knew she was the price to be paid for peace. If she ran, she’d be chased. If she was caught, Gendry and Lyarra would pay the price. Her whole House would. How stupid of her to ever pretend she was just some common girl, she had forgotten what it was like to have the weight of her lineage over shoulders. Maybe she had never fully known, her father had tried to shield her from it.

But her father was dead.

She was fortunate enough to have a fool for a husband, who was too eager to notice the marks a child had left in her body. Who was too stupid to realize she was no blushing maid on their wedding night.

The brotherhood had sworn secrecy and Beric had been kind to offer Gendry a place at Blackhaven. He'd work as a smith there, no one would ever know who he or Lyarra were. His lady Allyria Dayne would help raising her. He had promised Arya a generous dowry for her daughter, but she had refused it vehemently.

"If she ever needs it, give it to her. But don't let her believe that's all she's good for-Beric don't-" The man had engulfed her with his arms.

"I didn't even get to say goodbye." She sobbed against his chest. Lyarra wouldn't remember her face, she'd never learn how to fight or ride with her. "I didn't knew they'd make me-I would have never come-"

"I know child, I know."

How odd, to have a child of her own and yet be called one.

Gendry cried before riding back to Sharna's inn. Arya could count with a hand the times she had seen him breaking down in tears, but none had been like this. She had held him tightly, as if that could have won them any time. She inhaled deeply, trying to mark on her mind his essence: the smell of wood and steel.

 _He is mine_ , she thought furiously. _And no matter of who I marry, I'll always be his._

"This is not the end of it." He swore, but it felt more like a prayer. "I'll make sure she knows who you are."

"Don't." Arya begged. "Tell her I died fighting."

"How could I-"

"Tell her that her mother died riding to Riverrun. Tell her she loved her. And give her this." Her Needle went with Lyarra, before anyone got to take it from her. Gendry looked at her as if it burned.  "Promise me."

"And when she asks who her mother was?"

"She was just an orphan girl, an _outlaw_ , you met during the war." By then Arya was crying too. "Gendry, promise me."

Sansa comes to the Twins when Arya is told she'll need to lay on bed for the rest of her pregnancy. For the first time in her life, Arya can tell that her sister's presence brings her comfort. Most of the tensions that had once separated them were smoothed by the years and time apart.

"I always thought I'd be the first to have children," she comments lightly. Sansa remains with no betrothal and it doesn't seem to pain her.

"It's not as nice as you made it seem." She was already dreading the labor, she had no desire to be surrounded by strangers in such a moment. "You would probably be better at this."

Sansa would have managed to have Elmar Rey as a husband, with her courtesies and sly smiles. But Sansa didn't have a child to pine for.

How old was Lyarra now? She must have been a year old or so. Arya's chest hurt at the thought. Sharna had told her that her sons were speaking at ten moons of age. She must be calling Gendry 'Papa' already. He was a fool for her, holding her in his arms with a delicacy that was unlike him.

It was for the better, she kept repeating to herself. She’d be free in the Stormlands with her father.

"Arya?" Sansa called her name. She turned her head at her. "You seemed far away."

A part of her wanted to confess. She wanted to pour her heart out to Sansa and have her sister console her. But she couldn't.

"I miss my friends," she said instead.

Sansa cocked her head to the side, her red braid falling over her shoulder. "You mean Lord Beric and his… _men_?"

The slightest smile formed in Arya's lips. "The brotherhood had no leader, we weren't Beric's to command."

Sansa rolled her eyes, in a very unladylike fashion, ignoring how Arya counted herself as a part of the band.

"You know what I meant, Arya."

The smile went away with a sigh. "Yes. I miss them a lot. I feel so lonely here." The child in her belly kicked in protest, but she paid him no mind. She licked her dry lips. “Maybe you can stay after the birth?” _Don’t make me beg._

Sansa’s blue eyes widened. “Of course.”

The early pains of labor begin when Arya feels like she is about to burst at any moment. Elmar decides to stay away for the whole affair, going off with his brothers on a hunting trip. The tale feels familiar, but Arya can’t quite place it. She doesn’t gets to name her child, Elmar says Annara for a girl, to honor his lady mother, and Eddard for a boy –likely to remind her brother of their loyalty.

It’s painful. Arya had forgotten how horrible it was. This time, Gendry wasn’t there to hold her hand; Sharna wasn’t saying words of encouragement and Edric Dayne didn’t look as if he was about to pass out at any moment. There had been far too many people in that room. Now there were too, but Arya didn’t want any of them but her sister.

She almost had a screaming match with the midwife, who wouldn’t kick out her husband’s annoying sisters until Arya threatened to call for her brother, half mad with pain and fear. _I don’t want to die here_ , she thought deliriously. Not in the Twins, far from Winterfell and even farther from the Stormlands.

She wanted to be five and ten again, at Sharna’s inn with not a care in the world but living to see the next day. She wanted a straw bed and the warm body of a bastard boy against her back.

Then it’s over, the pain fades away with a wave. Sansa brushes away some dark strands of hair from her face. “Congratulations, it’s a son.” The Maester hands him over to her and Sansa cradles him close. “He is beautiful.”

Arya remained quiet, with silent tears streaming down her face.

“Do you want to hold him?” Arya bit her lip, staring at the wailing creature in her sister’s arms. She nodded reluctantly, opening her own to receive him.

The room empties at last, leaving the Stark sisters alone.

She almost felt guilty by holding this boy, _her son_ , while Lyarra was away and motherless.

“Elmar will be happy to hear he has a son.” She says, the words meaningless to her own ears.

Sansa is no fool, and the years at the Red Keep have turned her into a perceptive woman.

“Cersei once told me that if I couldn’t love the man I married, I’d love his children.” Sansa recalled. It was meant to be kind, but her words offered her no comfort.

Arya could barely hold Eddard Frey without breaking in tears at the memory of her Lyarra Rivers.

“At the end, she did kill her husband.” Her eyes flied to Sansa, widening. The red-haired woman did not flinch. Perhaps they were more similar than Arya thought. What horrors had turned her sister in the woman before her?

_A betrothal to Joffrey Lannister and a marriage to the Imp._

Eddard whines on her chest and Arya moves the sheets away so he can latch on her nipple. Wincing, Arya grimaced. She had also forgotten how unpleasant that was. He had dark hair like hers, instead of Elmar’s brownish blond. Arya allowed herself to take pleasure on that. Soon enough she fell asleep, with the boy still nursing.

Sansa woke her up hours later.

“He opened his eyes while you slept.” Sansa smiled, seeming that girl Arya had once despised for being perfect.

“He looks like a Stark?” She asked with a yawn. In truth, she couldn’t care less.

“Almost,” Sansa responded. "His are darker than mine and mother's, but those are the Tully blue eyes."

Arya laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to end way too tragically, but I decided to give it a hopeful note. *wink, wink* You all got it, right?
> 
> Any thoughts?


End file.
